I’m torn about Tyrant. FX played things admirably close to the vest, doling out details little by little, which raised my anticipation. It comes from 24‘s Howard Gordon and Homeland‘s Gideon Raff. The pilot was directed by David Yates (the last four Harry Potter films) after no less a talent than Ang Lee dropped out. Much of Tyrant‘s pilot episode was engrossing and fascinating, but the show has what could potentially become a glaring problem, which also happens to be its most interesting character.
Tyrant follows Barry Al Fayeed, the grown son of Middle Eastern dictator Khaled Al Fayeed. In an attempt to distance himself as far as possible from his family, Barry has relocated to California, where he work as a pediatrician and raises a son and a daughter with his wife, Molly (“Molly Al Fayeed” has a funny sound to it). Barry is called back to his homeland – see what I did there? – to attend the wedding of his nephew.
It’s here that we’re introduced to Barry’s older brother Jamal, in a very uncomfortable intro scene that shows Jamal having sex with what appears to be a man’s wife while the man waits in the other room. Jamal speeds off to the airport in a cherry red Lamborghini, and I don’t want to trivialize things, but the fact that he listens to Aerosmith after committing sexual assault makes things so much worse (more on this later). Jamal is the Sonny Corleone of the Al Fayeeds, and while Tyrant might not be breaking new ground with the character, Ashraf Barhom’s performance is unhinged and menacing enough that a degree of unoriginality is forgiven.
There was a lot I liked about Tyrant. First of all, the show looks absolutely beautiful, and the locales are so far-removed and foreign that it looks like a period piece, even though it takes place today. You can really see where the $3 million that FX spends on every episode goes. The episode makes good use of flashbacks; they’re woven nicely and tactfully into the present-day narrative and serve to illustrate why Barry hasn’t been home in twenty years.
There were some surprising plot developments I liked as well. Barry’s son Sammy is gay, and it’s refreshing to see this knowledge not treated like a huge revelation; it’s just part of who he is. Angels in America‘s Justin Kirk (I know he was on Weeds too, but he’ll always be Prior Walter to me) shows up and does nice work as John Tucker, an Al Fayeed apologist working at the American embassy. But I think my favorite plot point of the pilot episod was the death of Khaled Al Fayeed, hours after his grandson’s wedding. With a show called Tyrant, you expect Khaled to be the tyrant, right? Well, it looks like it’s going to be Jamal, but he drives his Lambo off a mountain side while forcing a woman to perform oral sex on him.
So that’s as awful a segue as I can ask for to lead me to my next point, and why I have some reservations about Tyrant. Jamal Al Fayeed is an interesting character, but he was shown acting as a sexual predator no less than THREE times. For crying out loud, the man took his daughter in law’s virginity AT HER WEDDING, and I’m not sure why. Jamal isn’t right in the head, sure, and is more than a little drunk on power, but Tyrant really overdid it with the rape. It loses all meaning when it’s used as no more than a narrative crutch, and brother, when rape loses meaning, we all lose, especially the victims. Furthermore, Jamal’s woman-beating tendencies are a little stereotypical.
Tyrant managed to stick the landing, more or less, at the end. Barry reveals himself not to Molly but to the audience as much more (and much less) than the upstanding man he presents himself to be. He slaps Sammy twice, and refuses to open up to Molly. In these scenes their dynamic reminded me a lot of Michael and Kaye Corleone in The Godfather. The revelation that Barry killed a man at a very young age was surprising, and hopefully Adam Rayner gets more to do with the character, because up until the last few minutes Barry was kind of a downer dick.
So I’m going to stick with Tyrant – for now. If this becomes a story of a man getting sucked into a world he wanted no part of and losing his soul in the process, I’m in. If I have to see people getting raped every week just so FX can justify their MA rating, I’m so out.
About Author
